My NPO feeds hungry kids, but what these children are really starved for is affection. As I guide a new volunteer to the playground of one of our summer feeding sites, a mass of young girls with heads covered in tight Somali hijabs crowd around us, two complete strangers, pushing for hugs. They take turns, hugging us two at a time, and some of them sneak to our sides and slip their little hands in ours.

I want to stay and play and give them all of the love and attention they need and deserve, but my brain is already ticking. I have to get back, I have to send that email, I need to make that chart, did I get that answer yet? I have to get back.

I can juggle. Hacky saks, that is. Everything else is a struggle to keep in the air, and I’m sad to report that more than one thing slips through my hands and hits the floor. I feel like I’m getting a crash course in adulthood, and I’m afraid I’m not very good at it yet. I have a million things to do, but at any given moment, I’m only aware of three or four of them. All of my tasks circulate on convention currents in the core of my mind. A few rise to the top and I work hurriedly to complete them, but as I do, new tasks rise and what I was working on in one moment falls back to the bottom in another.

I’ve never worked full-time before, and my three weeks at Children’s Hunger Alliance have been a real struggle, constantly “fighting fire,” as my boss calls it. I’m trying the best I can, and I hope this scrimmage makes me better. I don’t want to fall short when the real season comes!